Met het mooie weer trekken Nederlanders massaal de natuur in. Maar let op, want het tekenseizoen draait ook weer op volle toeren. Volgens het RIVM komen teken in heel Nederland voor, vooral in gebieden met bomen, struiken, hoog gras en dode bladeren. Na een wandeling wordt mensen aangeraden zichzelf goed te controleren. Maar hoe zit dat eigenlijk met honden en katten?

Kunnen ook zij de ziekte van Lyme oplopen na een tekenbeet? We legden die vraag voor aan dierenarts Piet Hellemans. Zijn antwoord is duidelijk: "Ja."

Zelden erg ziek

Toch hoeven baasjes niet direct in paniek te raken als ze een teek op hun huisdier vinden. Volgens de dierenarts worden honden en katten maar zelden echt ziek van Lyme. "Er worden wel eens antilichamen tegen Lyme gevonden bij honden en katten, maar het gaat eigenlijk nooit gepaard met ziekte of ziekteverschijnselen. Ze kunnen er wel ziek van worden, maar meestal verloopt een infectie zonder symptomen."

Dat betekent volgens Hellemans niet dat je achterover kunt leunen. Integendeel. "Mijn uitdrukkelijke advies is om honden en katten altijd preventief te behandelen en je dieren degelijk op teken te checken."

Let op!

Volgens de dierenarts zijn er drie manieren om je huisdier te beschermen: een anti-tekenband, druppels via een pipet of speciale tabletten die vaak tot twaalf weken werken. Daarbij geeft hij een belangrijke waarschuwing aan kattenbezitters. "Maar let op: het teekwerend middel van je hond mag je absoluut niet aan je kat geven! Deze zijn namelijk erg giftig voor katten."

Dagelijks controleren blijft volgens hem essentieel. Vooral achter de oren, in oksels, liezen, onder de kin en tussen de pootjes verstoppen teken zich graag.

Bron: RTL Nieuws

CATANZARO (ANP) - Wielrenner Wilco Kelderman gaat niet van start in de vierde etappe van de Giro d'Italia. Hij heeft volgens zijn ploeg Visma - Lease a Bike te veel last van de gevolgen van een valpartij in de tweede etappe.

De 35-jarige Kelderman was een belangrijke teamgenoot voor zijn Deense kopman Jonas Vingegaard, de favoriet voor de eindzege van de rittenkoers. Hij reed zondag nog wel de derde etappe uit, maar kon tijdens de rustdag onvoldoende herstellen.

Kelderman was zaterdag betrokken bij een grote valpartij 23 kilometer voor de finish. Bekende renners als Adam Yates, Jay Vine en Marc Soler smakten ook tegen het asfalt en hebben de Ronde van Italië ook verlaten. De eerste drie etappes van de Giro d'Italia werden in Bulgarije afgewerkt.

De renners zijn op de rustdag naar Italië gereisd. Daar staat de vierde en vlakke etappe van Catanzaro naar Cosenza op het programma.

Toyota is in 2025 onbetwist het bestverkochte automerk ter wereld. Het Japanse concern staat in maar liefst 61 landen op nummer één — van de Verenigde Staten en Japan tot Saoedi‑Arabië, Australië, Thailand en Zuid‑Afrika. Geen enkele andere fabrikant komt in de buurt.

De kracht van Toyota zit in een combinatie die concurrenten maar moeilijk kunnen evenaren: legendarische betrouwbaarheid, een extreem breed modellengamma (van de compacte Yaris tot de wereldwijd populaire Hilux en RAV4) en sterke posities in zowel welvarende markten als opkomende economieën. Daar komt bij dat Toyota's hybride aandrijflijnen, zoals in de Corolla en RAV4, precies op het juiste moment volwassen werden — nu volledig elektrisch rijden in veel landen nog hapert, kiezen miljoenen automobilisten voor de tussenoplossing waar Toyota al twee decennia in investeert.

Europa laat een opvallend ander beeld zien. Hier domineren vooral nationale en regionale helden: Volkswagen in Duitsland, Oostenrijk, Denemarken, Zwitserland en het Verenigd Koninkrijk, Renault in Frankrijk en Turkije, Fiat in Italië, Dacia in Roemenië, Škoda in Tsjechië en Bulgarije, en Volvo in Zweden. Noorwegen springt eruit met Tesla als marktleider — een direct gevolg van de meest ambitieuze EV‑stimulering ter wereld. En in Nederland is opmerkelijk genoeg Kia het bestverkochte merk.

China is het andere grote verhaal. Daar is BYD inmiddels de onbetwiste nummer één en het merk wint ook in Singapore. Vietnam koos voor eigen bodem met VinFast, India blijft trouw aan Maruti (Suzuki) en in Iran domineert thuisspeler Iran Khodro. Hieronder de complete lijst in alfabetische volgorde.

LONDEN (ANP/RTR) - De Britse premier Keir Starmer heeft zijn kabinet laten weten dat hij niet opstapt. "De Labourpartij heeft een procedure om een partijleider aan te vechten en die is niet in gang gezet", staat in een verklaring van zijn kantoor.

Starmer vergaderde dinsdagochtend met ministers die volgens Britse media niet met hem verder willen. The Telegraph schreef dat naar verwachting zes kabinetsleden aandringen op zijn vertrek. Het gaat volgens bronnen onder meer om de ministers van Binnenlandse Zaken, Buitenlandse Zaken, Volksgezondheid en Defensie.

Onder de afvallige ministers bestaat volgens de krant nog wel onenigheid over hoe zijn vertrek eruit zou moeten zien. Defensieminister John Healey zou een snelle partijverkiezing willen om een vervanger te kiezen, maar er is ook steun voor een langer proces. Dan heeft de populaire burgemeester van Greater Manchester Andy Burnham nog mogelijkheden om mee te doen. Die zit nu niet in het parlement en kan Starmer daarom niet uitdagen.

tokyobogue has added a photo to the pool:

tokyobogue has added a photo to the pool:

etsu2 has added a photo to the pool:

The Musk v. Altman trial entered its third week Monday, with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and former OpenAI co-founder and renowned AI researcher Ilya Sutskever taking the stand. Nadella testified that Elon Musk never raised concerns to him that Microsoft's investments in OpenAI violated any special commitments, and said he viewed the partnership as clearly commercial from the start. He also described OpenAI's 2023 board crisis as "amateur city."
Meanwhile, Sutskever testified that he had raised concerns about Sam Altman because he feared OpenAI could be "destroyed." He expressed concerns about Altman's behavior to the board, in part because he said he felt "a great deal of ownership" over the startup. "I simply cared for it, and I didn't want it to be destroyed," Sutskever said. CNBC reports: Nadella said he was "very proud" that Microsoft took the risk to invest in OpenAI when "no one else was willing" to bet on the fledgling lab. Musk, who testified late last month, said Microsoft's $10 billion investment was the key tipping point that made him believe OpenAI was violating its nonprofit mission. He testified that the scale of the investment bothered him, and it prompted him to open a legal investigation into OpenAI. "I was concerned they were really trying to steal the charity," Musk said from the stand.

Nadella said he did not believe Microsoft's investments in OpenAI were donations, and that there was a clear commercial element to their partnership from the outset. He said during the partnership's early years, Microsoft gave OpenAI sharp discounts on computing resources, and Microsoft believed it would reap marketing benefits from doing so. During a separate video deposition that was played on Monday morning, Michael Wetter, a corporate development executive at Microsoft, said the company has recognized approximately $9.5 billion in revenue to date through its partnership with OpenAI as of March 2025.

[...] Nadella said he was "pretty surprised" by the board's decision [to fire Altman in November 2023], and that his priority was to try and figure out how to maintain continuity for Microsoft customers. Immediately after Altman was removed, Nadella said he made an effort to learn more about what happened, adding that he suspected jealousy and poor communication was at play. During conversations with OpenAI board members after the firing, Nadella said he was simply trying to understand the language in the OpenAI's statement about Altman being "not consistently candid" while communicating with the board. That language, Nadella said, "just didn't sort of suffice, because this is the CEO of a company that we are invested in and we're deeply partnered with, and so I felt that they could have explained to me what are the incidents or what is the detail behind it." There must have been instances of jealousy or miscommunication that could have justified pushing out Altman, Nadella said. He wanted more depth from the board members after the remark about candor, but no such information was available, he said. "It was sort of amateur city, as far as I'm concerned," Nadella testified.

[...] Musk testified that he is not entirely against OpenAI having a for-profit unit, but he said it became "the tail wagging the dog." He repeatedly accused Altman and Brockman of enriching themselves from a charity while also reaping the positive associations that come from running a nonprofit. "Microsoft has their own motivations, and that would be different from the motivations of the charity," Musk said from the stand. "All due respect to Microsoft, do you really want Microsoft controlling digital superintelligence?"

During a videotaped deposition shown in court last week, former OpenAI director Tasha McCauley recalled a discussion with Nadella and her fellow board members after the 2023 decision to dismiss Altman as OpenAI's CEO. "To the best of my recollection, Satya wanted to restore things to as they had been," McCauley said. The board members didn't think that was the right move, she said. But as a court witness on Monday, Nadella said he never demanded that the board reinstate Altman as OpenAI CEO. Recap:

Sam Altman Had a Bad Day In Court (Day Eight)
Sam Altman's Management Style Comes Under the Microscope At OpenAI Trial (Day Seven)
Brockman Rebuts Musk's Take On Startup's History, Recounts Secret Work For Tesla (Day Six)
OpenAI President Discloses His Stake In the Company Is Worth $30 Billion (Day Five)
Musk Concludes Testimony At OpenAI Trial (Day Four)
Elon Musk Says OpenAI Betrayed Him, Clashes With Company's Attorney (Day Three)
Musk Testifies OpenAI Was Created As Nonprofit To Counter Google (Day Two)
Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Head To Court (Day One)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Twee private inlichtingenbureaus onderzochten in het geheim medewerkers van het Internationaal Strafhof in Den Haag. Voornaamste doelwit was de advocaat die in 2024 de hoofdaanklager van de rechtbank, Karim Khan, van seksueel misbruik beschuldigde.

Na de kabinetsvergadering van deze dinsdag verklaarde de Britse premier aan te blijven. Er is geen formele procedure voor een leiderschapswissel ingezet, ondanks toenemende druk in de Labourfractie.

Met memes, ironie en humor probeert het Franse ministerie van Buitenlandse Zaken met het account French Response desinformatie tegen te spreken en het Franse standpunt te vertolken. Tot tevredenheid van de minister: „French Response heeft de matrix in de war gestuurd.”

Apple and Google have taken a big step toward securing cross-platform texting, ending years of messages bouncing around in glorified plaintext. Apple announced this week that encrypted Rich Communication Services (RCS) messaging is rolling out in beta for iPhone users running iOS 26.5 and Android users on the latest version of Google Messages. The feature works across supported carriers and adds end-to-end encryption to cross-platform chats that were still taking the scenic route through carrier-era messaging infrastructure. Users will know it's enabled when a lock icon appears in RCS conversations. Apple says E2EE RCS messages cannot be read while traveling between devices, bringing Android-to-iPhone chats closer to the protections offered by WhatsApp and Signal. The move lands as other platforms head in the opposite direction. Earlier this month, Meta confirmed it was backing away from parts of its encryption rollout for Instagram DMs, telling The Register that "very few" people actually used the feature and suggesting privacy-minded users head over to WhatsApp instead. Apple, meanwhile, appears content to lean harder into the privacy angle, finally plugging one of the more obvious holes in modern messaging security. That gap has been hanging around for years. While iMessage chats between Apple devices were already encrypted, conversations involving Android phones could fall back to SMS or unencrypted RCS, depending on carrier support. Google had offered encrypted RCS chats inside Google Messages for years, but only when both sides used Google's ecosystem. Apple joining the party means cross-platform RCS encryption is finally starting to span the two largest mobile ecosystems. The rollout is still marked as beta, and carrier support varies by region, so not everyone will get encrypted chats immediately. UK availability remains unclear for now, as none of the major UK networks currently appear on Apple's published compatibility lists for the feature. Still, after two decades of the mobile industry insisting that interoperability and security could not coexist, cross-platform texting may finally be catching up with the rest of modern messaging. ®

Partner Content ZTE Corporation and Claro have launched a new 4K Ultra HD IP STB in Brazil, combining stunning visuals, intelligent voice control and rich content, introducing a new generation of 4K Ultra HD set-top box (STB) in Brazil – bringing together stunning Ultra HD visuals, intelligent voice control, fast connectivity, and rich content into one seamless experience. Against the backdrop of the sustained rapid development of Brazil's digital TV and streaming media business, user requirements for video quality, interactive experience, and network performance continue to rise. ZTE together with Claro, officially launched the new-generation 4K Ultra HD IP STB Z4KW6, bringing “Ultra HD + Intelligent Voice + High-Speed Connectivity + Massive Content” comprehensively to Brazilian households and driving a further upgrade of the digital entertainment experience. Built for the next era of digital TV and streaming, it delivers sharper picture quality and effortless hands-free interaction with far-field voice, making everything feel faster, smoother, and more intuitive. With enhanced connectivity, streaming stays smooth – even in peak usage hours of multi-device homes. And with a rich content ecosystem, all entertainment comes together in one place. Designed for simplicity and built for performance, the Z4KW6 sets a new benchmark for home entertainment. This launch marks a new step forward for home entertainment in Brazil – smarter, faster, and more immersive than ever.

A month after Chevin Fleet Solutions declared its FleetWave outage contained and systems restored, the company has now admitted that attackers accessed customer databases and potentially acquired operational and personal data. Chevin confirmed the breach in an email to customers, seen by The Register, marking the first time it has acknowledged that data was accessed during the April incident that knocked parts of web-based software offline across the UK and US. At the time, Chevin said it had pulled parts of its Azure-hosted FleetWave tool offline while outside cybersecurity specialists investigated. Status pages showed a "major outage" across the UK and US, but beyond that, customers got little detail on what had happened or whether any data had been caught up in it. Now it turns out that at least some customer databases were indeed affected by the breach. According to the email, Chevin’s forensic investigation determined that an "unauthorized third-party accessed and potentially acquired certain data" from customer databases backed up on April 3, 2026. The exposed information varies depending on how customers configured FleetWave, but includes operational fleet management data alongside personal information such as names, contact details, and payroll numbers. It’s unclear how many individuals and organizations have been affected. The Register’s asked for comment and a spokesperson told us: "Chevin recently experienced a cybersecurity incident affecting certain systems. We immediately took steps to contain the incident, engaged with law enforcement and external cybersecurity experts, and have since restored impacted services. "Following consultation with external cybersecurity forensic experts, we are confident our systems have been secured. Our customers are our top priority, and we are working directly with those impacted." The company insists that the stolen information does not generally include any of the higher-risk categories under GDPR, such as financial information, payment card details, passport data, or special category data. Chevin also claims in its email to customers that it has taken steps to stop the information from being "published, sold, or misused," and says ongoing dark web monitoring has not identified evidence of the data circulating online. One Chevin customer told The Register their organization was unlikely to have been the intended ransomware target due to its size, suggesting the breach may have been aimed elsewhere. The customer also questioned why Chevin appeared confident enough to restore systems and close out forensic work before later returning with confirmation that data had in fact been accessed. The customer said the mention of payroll numbers came as a surprise because their company does not use FleetWave for payroll data, raising questions about how tailored the notification really was. Chevin is now offering affected customers a one-time download of their SQL database and a spreadsheet summarizing potentially exposed records through a secure portal. In the email, signed by CEO Gary Thompson, Chevin says it is "confident that the incident has been contained" and FleetWave systems are now "safe and secure for customers." ®

At the German pavilion, the artist has re-created the housing estate where she grew up to tell the forgotten history of migrants, including her parents, hired under a socialist agreement between East Germany and Vietnam – then abandoned

An air of civilisational wipeout hangs over the Gehrenseestrasse complex, an abandoned housing estate on the north-eastern outskirts of Berlin, where the city still looks shabby without the chic. The insides of the nine prefabricated blocks have long been gutted; six floors of empty window frames stare hollow-eyed over multi-lane carriageways. In the courtyard, paintballers have left behind wooden barricades from when they played at World War III.

Yet in one of the second-floor rooms of Berlin’s largest ruin, artist Sung Tieu is waltzing across the concrete floor and reliving scenes from her childhood. “Here was the single bed I shared with my mother for three years,” she says, pointing into a corner of the small room. “Two metres by 90cm, can you believe it?” There in the corridor is where her neighbours used to make bánh bao dumplings on camping stoves, for lack of private kitchens. “I still remember the smell.” Here was the door through which she used to entertain her best friend when his mother locked him in during working hours. “We played cards through the gaps,” she recalls with glee.

Continue reading...

In UK politics news: things are looking a bit dicey for Sir Keir. The first government minister has resigned, joining 77 other Labour MPs who have urged the PM to quit immediately or draw up a timetable. This follows a threat from Catherine West, now withdrawn, to challenge him as leader. Of the current names being suggested as a potential challenger, Wes Streeting is mentioned most frequently. Current odds make Andy Burnham the favourite to be next Labour party leader (and, by default, UK Prime Minister till the next election), though he has the hurdle of not (currently) being an MP and therefore not eligible.

"The Dream of the Gentle Flood": Thomas Pynchon, Brian Wilson, Neil Young & Los Angeles [ReclinerNotes]

Dat het misging, is duidelijk. Maar wáár het mis is gegaan, is een mysterie. Een fatbiker rijdt op de vluchtstrook van de hoofdrijbaan van de A16. Ogenschijnlijk onverschrokken rijdt hij tussen de voorbijrazende auto's en vrachtwagens.